RANCOR Drill

RANCOR Drill

The RANCOR Drill is a rotary percussive coring drill designed for the Mars Sample Return architecture designed by Paul Backes at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Honeybee Robotics is developing this drill to gather core samples for analysis on Mars, and for potential future sample return to Earth.

This lightweight drill can capture cores that are 1 cm in diameter by 6 cm long. At just over 3kg, this design provides high performance for an end-of-arm tool in a mass- and power-limited environment. It is built with a robust design for reliable performance: a single actuator drives the bit rotation, creates percussion, and breaks off the core samples for analysis and/or sample return.RELATED PROJECTSCONTACT US